3.05.2008

We sleep when we have to, just to keep ourselves going. A few hours and we're fully charged and we're back out there again, devouring this place.

Tokyo is the opposite of Iraq. It's clean, safe, and thoroughly enjoyable. We walk down narrow streets lined with shops, rubbernecking unapologetically. Arcades, pachinko "casinos", stores selling DVD porn (we learned that if the sign is pink, it's probably porn or some other appendage of the sex industry).

There's a Chinatown in this city that we took advantage of, stealing an extra mini-vacation. Paper lamps are strung across the streets and you know they'd look fucking amazing at night when the candles are lit. Chowing down on their food, we fumbled with chopsticks, and then we went to an old temple and enjoyed some oooh ahhhing mindblown tourist goodness.

Another discovery we made: the restaurant that inspired the set of the epic fight against the Crazy 8s or whatever in the movie Kill Bill. If you remember Uma Thurman running across balconies, up and down stairs, hacking her way through an army of dudes in suits and masks, picture that building, only as a restaurant. That's the real incarnation of it. One of the waitresses informed me that Quentin Tarantino likes to hang out in this restaurant, and devoted that fight scene to it.

How To Condemn Your Soul

Episode II

This is a continuation of the blog originally hosted at eleven-bravo.blogspot.com. Through a twist of fate, I was not given the MOS 11B, instead I became an 11C. Calling a blog eleven-bravo when I'm 11C is moot.

The old blog contains the first phase of my brief army career. This is the second, the deployment.

It is also crap.

Cover Your Ass

You can't trust everything you read or take it all for face value. NO ONE has the entire view of the Iraq war. There are millions of pieces of the puzzle, perspectives from all sides and it can never be fully understood. This perspective comes from me, a young, uneducated, barely-passable Infantryman. This isn't the news. It's just a look through another set of eyes, nothing more.

Details are omitted to protect OPSEC. Here's a stolen disclaimer.

This website is privately operated and was designed to provide personal information, views and commentary about the authors experiences in Iraq and elsewhere. The images depicted and opinions expressed on this website are solely those of the author and contributors and not those of any agency of the United States Government, expressly including, but not limited to, the Department of Defense, the United States Army, or the United States Army Reserve. The site is not designed, authorized, sanctioned, or affiliated, by or with, any agency of the United States Government, expressly including, but not limited to, the Department of Defense, the United States Army, or the United States Army Reserve. Users and abusers accept and agree to this disclaimer in the use of any information accessed in this website.